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The True Mirror
The True Mirror (or "TTM" for short) is a forum born from the ashes of Fire Emblem Online and Tellius Reborn. It was originally a site purely for role-playing, but soon expanded. It now accommodates many different communities, such as artists, amateur game developers, and storytellers. Although it is not a particularly large forum, it is always active and has enjoyed over three years of relative popularity. As expected, Administration staff are always looking to expand. Early 2010, the Admin staff decided that a change was needed and made a new forum. It deleted a lot of the old and inactive members, and The True Mirror now enjoys a small but active community. The new interface will, as of this month, be have been going for a year. Founding of the Mirror The True Mirror's origins can be tracked back to the original Gametalk. As the site declined, among the members who left it were Seraphim Swordmaster and Cudpug. The former left for Fire Emblem Online and the latter later followed suit. They met up with Ranna and moonlitewriter while on FEO and they also joined the role-playing forum, Tellius Reborn. However, with site problems including trolls and frequent story restarts, Ranna decided to create a new forum for their passion, which Seraphim Christened "The True Mirror" after a song by his favourite videogame composer, Motoi Sakuraba. Expansion Originally, TTM was dedicated to role-plays in the fictional world that Seraphim had created for his role-play Tales of the Celesti. However, it soon became apparent that in order to attract more members that they would have to cover more than just role-playing in a fictional world that only about seven people had ever heard about. After setting up boards dedicated to storytelling, art, gaming and more general topics, including a simple chat board, the quartet began to invite members from various other forums in order to boost their total Memberlist. In time, TTM incorporated a Feedback page to give members of the site a chance to give their thoughts and ideas for the future of the forum. Many of the forum's staples, such as the House of Debates, the Workshop, and the Podcasts were born from this area of the site. Even if a new forum idea is rejected, the Administrators generally go out of their way to ensure that the better elements of it are implemented. TTM's popularity is arguably because well over fifty percent of the site has been proposed, and created, by its normal members rather than the Administrators. As such, the members are sometimes seen as having more power than the Administrators themselves. Division The months following TTM's first year were turbulent at best. In late May/early Summer 2008, Seraphim Swordmaster left the Administrator staff, citing the reason as his newfound power having gone to his head, though he did not leave the forum itself. Complications regarding moonlitewriter also arose, and for a time it looked like relations between the Administrators were on the brink of turning eternally sour. To make matters worse, issues regarding some of the members were also creating conflict. xcool97x, along with several others, left the forums due to disputes complaints with the Administrators themselves, and moonlitewriter relinquished his position. Now with only two Administrators and with frequent verbal battles erupting every day, it looked as it TTM was about to become a flame warzone. This was compounded by the joining of Sgt. Joe who caused more than his fair share of trouble. Reunification It was around this time that Alberio joined the forums. Very few people knew anything about him, and even less cared after the commotion made around him. After a few clashes with the Administrators, things escalated when he made a full-on verbal attack on them. However, this caused almost the entire forum to unite with the Administrators. Eventually, Alberio was finally banned and TTM returned to its previous, socially active state. Next Stage TTM is currently entering something of a Golden Age. Old projects, such as Seraphim's Tales of the Ocean are getting closer to completion day by day, and the Role-Play that started the site, has been reborn in a new format. Furthermore, the Role-Playing Organisation has helped to encourage the creation of new, member-created Role-Plays. In addition, The Library's community has experienced something of a boost with a poetry contest and it is believed that similar competitions will arise in The Gallery. And with the Administrators watching over the forum while Seraphim moderates the site Wiki, the future is looking brighter than ever for The True Mirror. The New Forum The biggest change was to come on March 12th, 2010, when the entire forum shifted to a different domain. There were a few reasons for this, the main being that Informe, the host server where the original TTM as founded, had a massive glitch that made the forum full of irritating bugs. When the Admins attempted to resolve this problem with the staff, Informe were not at all helpful, and the Admins were left with a dilemma. The old and dated, buggy interface had to be updated, but Informe were not a sure-fire guarantee. And then, it was decided by Ranna that a new forum should be made. At first, scepticism was adopted, especially due to the fact that Fire Emblem Online died due to a large-scale format change. Nevertheless, the members were incredibly supportive and all made the swap with relative ease, giving positive feedback about the new site. The new interface has been used for almost a year now, with a great degree of success and new members joining as well as old.